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Wednesday, 20 August 2014

Acceptable in the '80s: Marauder Orc and Goblin Army

Hello all... We arrive among the pages of White Dwarf 124 today and have a look at a very well known release of the Marauder Orc and Goblin army, otherwise known as Uzgrim's Marauders. For me, this was 'the Warhammer army' of the time and I can recall this spread of photographs being pored over by myself and my schoolyard friends avidly. Even now, its a great looking army made up from the rather good goblinoid range that the Morrisons put out in the late '80s. Though of course, they are no Kevin Adams sculpts!

Many of the models we have seen before, such as the goblin chariot, but many are fresh to this release. One thing that strikes me looking through these miniatures are all the little handpainted banners added to most of the units. Considering that the 'Eavy Metal team painted these as a favour to the Morrisons, they have done a really good job here to say the least.

One thing that I have spotted here is a return of the strange bulbous mace head weapon seen on earlier goblins in the Citadel range on one of the fanatics - a nice touch! As with all the goblinoids from Marauder there is a distinct Mongol feel to their armour and weapons. This 'look' really helps differentiate the two ranges.

As with the Dark Elf force before, the army was accompanied with a little bit of background and more interestingly, a series of illustrations to help create the banners shown in many of the photographs. I can recall asking my mum to copy these at work (as at that time they only photocopier I ever saw was in the hospital my mother helped run) and coloured them in very badly with my Citadel Colour paints.

My efforts at painting banners and flags wouldn't improve really for a further twenty-five years!

All in all... This is a great army. I wish it was still available today!

I agree with Chico that these are some of the best Orcs sculpted...even compared to Kev Adams (whose work I love too!). I certainly remember drooling over this army for many hours as a youth and have now assembled enough Marauder Greenskins to produce a nice little army. Now I just have to find time to paint it! I will certainly be attempting to duplicate some of these banners when the time comes.

Lovely stuff. I'm really enjoying this series of articles as this was around the time I started buying WD regularly and yes I started O&G because of this and other marauder adverts. I've still got the man mangler too!